21 October 2012

Microcosm: War on Women and Constitutional Rights

To view the graphic associated with this report, go to my blog on TypePad. Blogger's software will not allow it to be uploaded. My apology for the inconvenience. 

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THE BATTLE FOR a seat in the bicameral Washington state legislature provides a unique and troubling picture – a portrait relevant to readers everywhere – of the lengths to which religious conservatives will go to wage war against women, homosexuals and progressive modes of governance.
 
Superficially, the fight is a heated clash between between six-term-incumbent Rep. Jeannie Darneille and political upstart John Connelly over who will be Tacoma's next state senator. But most of the heat comes from Connelly, who is attacking Darneille with a campaign that is notable both for its million-dollar budget and its use of smear tactics so outrageous they are condemned even by some of Connelly's former colleagues.
 
What is at stake is whether the (mostly) Republican forces of misogyny and sexual oppression can hide behind a Democratic label to capture or paralyze the Legislature in a state that has long been considered progressive – so much so a Roosevelt Administration official once sarcastically labeled it “the Soviet of Washington.” 

Darneille, a Democrat who typifies the state's progressive element, has proven herself a fierce defender of female reproductive freedom and women's rights in general. A modern personification of the traditional New Deal humanitarian, she is a dependable protector of the social safety net and an impassioned proponent of universal health care. She also advocates granting marriage equality and all other forms of anti-discrimination protection to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals. 

Connelly, who goes by the Kennedy-esque nickname “Jack,” is a successful trial lawyer who lacks legislative experience. Though he claims the Democratic Party label,  he has publicly acknowledged he's against abortion even in cases of rape or incest, that he opposes granting LGBT people the right to marry and that he's “undecided” on whether sexual minorities deserve any other civil rights protections. Connelly also boasts of leadership roles in two arch-conservative Catholic organization, the Knights of Columbus and a notoriously anti-LGBT Tacoma parish

His law firm, Connelly Law Offices, is listed as an “ultrasonic champion” of 4US, an anti-abortion organization that describes itself as a primary donor of ultrasound machines to so-called “crisis pregnancy centers.” Reproductive-rights advocates condemn these clinics for disseminating false or deceptive information intended to bully abortion-seekers into carrying their fetuses to term no matter how unwanted the birth or ruinous its consequences. But 4US defends deliberate deception – a tactic curiously parallel to Connelly's claim of Democratic Party values – as essential to its mission.  “A pregnant woman in crisis sees her baby for the first time on an ultrasound machine,” the 4US website explains, and 96 percent of those mothers “will bring a baby into the world.”

Significantly, the Knights of Columbus is another 4US “ultrasonic champion.”

And Wal-Mart – perhaps the most relentlessly anti-union corporation on the planet – is listed as a 4US “sonic champion.”

Connelly thus has demonstrable ties – each one revealed by credible material readily available on the Internet – not only to the forces of the Christian Right and its wars against women and homosexuals but to Ayn Rand capitalism and its war against American workers.

Each of these associations is equally damning. But the Knights connection is clearly the more threatening for women and LGBT people. Through his local Knights trusteeship,  Connelly has significant connections to the outspoken homophobe Rick Santorum, and through Santorum to the mysterious Opus Dei organization.  Also via the Knights, Connelly is associated with the ecumenically homophobic National Organization for Marriage;  with the vindictively fundamentalist Focus on the Family; likewise with the notably homophobic Church of Latter Day Saints; and – once again – with Opus Dei.

Any notion Knights opinion in Washington state might be less intolerant than elsewhere is refuted by the website material linked above: note how it commands members to “avoid supporting evil acts...reject Referendum 74.”

Despite the fact Connelly shares the zero-tolerance position of Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan on abortion; despite Connelly's use of Republican campaign tactics; despite the undeniable role of the above-listed organizations in converting the Republicans into fundamentalist storm troops – despite all these  facts, definitive evidence Connelly is a deep-cover agent of the Republican Party itself remained elusive.
 
Nevertheless Connelly's anti-woman, anti-LGBT positions transform his oft-brandished history of anti-government lawsuits into a powerful appeal to the district's conservative minority. So does the subtly Teabagger-tainted rhetoric sometimes encountered on his website, as in the “Final Thoughts” section of his “Issues” page.  “The District needs more than a straight line party voter who has very little real experience in the private sector.”

Connelly is attacking on so broad a front he is now attempting to discredit even Darneille's professional background. (Washington's Legislature, though always a full-time occupation when in session, is ultimately a part-time job, which means its members necessarily pursue non-legislative careers.) Contrary to Connelly's innuendo, Darneille's career is indeed in “the private sector,” specifically in the successful management of nonprofit human-service agencies.

Though Darneille trounced Connelly in the Democratic primary by 59-40 percent, he refused to concede. Allowed by quirky Washington state law to again oppose Darneille in the general election (6 November 2012), he soon began deluging 27th District voters with anti-Darneille attack ads, their negative content quickly emerging as a campaign issue in its own right.

The advertisements and flyers with which Connelly is flooding the district's airwaves and mailboxes denounce Darneille as “against public safety,” a tactic that prompted immediate condemnation from Democrat Bill Baarsma, a former Tacoma mayor. In a letter published by The News Tribune, the McClatchy-owned local daily, Baarsma implicitly called Connelly a liar:

“I thought I had seen it all during my many years involved in local politics, but trial lawyer Jack Connelly’s desperate, over-the-top, self-funded...campaign for state Senate sets a new standard. He is now running televised attack ads against his opponent, state Rep. Jeannie Darneille, suggesting she was in some way complicit in two horrific criminal acts committed years before she was elected to the Legislature.”

In point of fact,” Baarsma continued, “Darneille has the sole endorsement of those people who have to fight crime each and every day – local police (Tacoma Police Union 6 and the Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs) and the state patrol (Washington State Troopers Association).”

Sen. Debbie Regala, who has endorsed Darneille as her replacement, joins Baarsma in decrying Connelly's smear tactics. “He has resorted to...innuendo, distortions and manipulations of the facts to imply Darneille is not concerned about public safety. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

Many local Democrats wonder why Connelly is waging such a desperate fight for a state senate seat. More to the point, they are perplexed by the record-breaking sums of money – Connelly claims it is all his own – he is lavishing on his campaign. 
 
To put Connelly's unprecedented outlay in perspective, a Washington State Public Disclosure Commission spokesperson says each Democratic legislative candidate spent an average of $124,170 in 2010. According to Connelly's own reports to PDC, to date he has already spent $783,634.34 – 6.1 times that 2010 statewide norm.

What could motivate such extravagance?

“I've wracked my brain trying to figure out what his game is,” said one longtime Democratic activist. “The only thing I can think of is he hopes the campaign will benefit his law practice.”

Connelly's connections with conservative Christianity and his unapologetic use of classic Republican smear tactics may therefore be the most indicative evidence of his intentions. Perhaps a broader explanation may be found within the warning published three years ago in several progressive media outlets, that Christian fundamentalists – having successfully infiltrated the Republican party, purged it of liberals and turned it into an army of religious fanatics – are attempting to take over the Democratic Party the same way they captured the GOP.

And “fanatical” is an accurate description of Connelly's astounding campaign expenditures, which – backed by a PDC-reported $1.07 million war chest – provide a grim picture of his capabilities. 

“Once upon a time, though it may seem strange to think of it...the Republican Party was moderately progressive,” wrote Bruce Wilson of the Talk to Action website. “So there's no reason Democrats can't become populist theocrats, especially if they are willing to jettison core principles such as support for secular government and minority rights...Along a wide range of fronts, the American religious right has been infiltrating, influencing, befuddling, and neutralizing the Democratic Party and the American left.”

Similar disclosures, all relevant given Connelly's opposition to homosexuality and female reproductive freedom, are the subject of several recent books by widely recognized authors. These works include American Fascists: the Christian Right and the War on America (Chris Hedges; Simon & Schuster: 2006); American Theocracy (Kevin Phillips; Viking Press: 2006); and The Family subtitled The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (Jeff Sharlet; Harper Collins 2008). Each warns of an extended campaign by Protestant and Catholic zealots, all lavishly financed by Big Business, to replace constitutional governance with zero-tolerance biblical law, the Christian counterpart of Islam's Sharia.

The campaign to impose Christian theocracy on the United States is thus proven to be terrifyingly real.  The present-day war against women – in truth a war against human sexuality in every form – is merely its most visible manifestation, whether in Tacoma or elsewhere.

Another index to the theocratic threat is a 2005 Rasmussen poll that reveals 63 percent of the U.S. population believes the Bible “is literally true,” that it is the incontestable word of god. The core belief of Christian fundamentalism whether Catholic or Protestant, this is the doctrine that fuels the burgeoning threat of theocracy.

The Manhattan Declaration,  effectively a fatwa of Christian jihad against secular society, confirms the magnitude of the theocratic threat, both by its number of signatories and by its text:

“We, as Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical Christians...act together in obedience to the one true —God...especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn...are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.”

Its concluding lines are especially revealing:

“(W)e will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.”

Many civil libertarians fear the only way the Manhattan Declaration's signers can achieve their ends is by abolishing constitutional democracy, imposing biblical law, disempowering women and outlawing sexual minorities.

In its most extreme form, the U.S. theocracy movement “is well known for its proposals that alleged sinners, including homosexuals and rebellious teenagers, be put to death by stoning,” notes Talk to Action's Wilson.

Connelly, like his Christian conservative associates, is already redefining religious liberty in accordance with Manhattan Declaration principles. No longer is freedom of religion the separation of church and state or the freedom from persecution guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Now it is the Ryan/Santorum definition: the alleged freedom of religious extremists to discriminate against those with whom they disagree.
In this context, Connelly's “Issues” statement, linked above, is especially revealing. It describes contraception as “an area where increasing respect for differences of opinion and beliefs is necessary and desirable.” Which begs the question whether Connelly believes an anti-contraception pharmacist has the right to nullify women's reproductive freedom by withholding birth control – even if that pharmacy is the only accessible source.

His conservative stance on other matters of women's rights, LGBT equality and human sexuality in general proves him to be radically out-of-step with much of the state's progressive history.

Meanwhile the Republicans – here (as everywhere else in the U.S.), the party of Ayn Rand economics mated with the Christian drive toward biblical theocracy – say they believe the Legislature is theirs for the taking.  And if they win the governor's mansion as well – at this writing Democrat Jay Inslee has only a narrow lead over Republican Rob McKenna –  Washington would almost certainly go the way of Wisconsin, where Scott Walker's anti-labor victories in 2010 and in this year's failed recall vote also imposed a maliciously anti-woman, anti-homosexual coup.  

It's the Wisconsin example that makes the possibility of a Connelly victory so frightening to so many real Democrats. Given Connelly's anti-woman, anti-LGBT views and his membership in misogynistic and homophobic organizations, Darneille supporters rationally fear he would vote with the Republicans in any legislative assault against reproductive freedom or any attack against the other hard-won liberties of women and sexual minorities.

Connelly tries to give the impression he would respect all such rights: “Jack does not believe that anybody should be discriminated agains,” the “Issues” section of his website states. “No one wants to see a teenage girl drop out of school and face a lifetime of poverty because she became pregnant. Nor should she feel compelled to suffer the pain and anguish of a termination where this can be prevented.”

An unknown factor in the senatorial election is Referendum 74, which seeks voter endorsement of a gay marriage bill passed by the Legislature and signed by the Democratic governor earlier this year. The referendum's presence on the ballot promises an unprecedented turnout from progressives and religious conservatives alike. The former clearly dominate the 27th District. But the latter are under unprecedented pulpit-pressure to vote against the measure. What this might mean in terms of Connelly's election prospects remains unknown.

There's also the fact Darneille has only slightly more than $233 thousand in her total campaign budget, small change compared to Connelly's million plus. Darneille has not made an issue of it, but the inequality between the two candidates is a perfect microcosm of the socioeconomic chasm that defines the present-day United States.

Though such a lopsided fight usually ends in victory for the wealthier contender, a poll conducted in June by a Seattle-based political consulting firm indicated the 27th District's voters are a solid 64.6 percent in favor of women's reproductive rights. With the general election already underway – these days Washington casts its ballots by mail – Darneille and her supporters are counting on pro-choice voters for the numbers they need to triumph over Connelly's lies, distortions and money. 

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(My thanks to Pat Fletcher for her graphics skills and for helping edit this text.)
 
LB/10-21 October 2012
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